Macdonald Institute at Guelph—Agricultural College—Their value to students—Back to work through Texas.

In March 1908 the doctor advised me to send my wife north for a change, as she had lived too many years in a southern climate, so I sent her back to Guelph, Canada, where she was born. In October of the same year I got leave from the company, and went to bring the family back, my first holiday in four years. On my way up I stopped some hours in St. Louis, where I saw Taft, the president-elect, who was then on a stumping-tour, and was speaking in St. Louis. The country was election crazy, and all that men could talk about was the elections, and, as is always the case in America, election stories were on everybody’s lips. Two that I heard I will give here. A republican orator was holding forth in New York, and after his speech he said he would be glad to answer any arguments brought by the other side. After two or three men had made remarks and been answered, an old Irish-American got up and said, "Eight years ago they told us to vote for Bryan and 293that we would be prosperous. Oi did vote for Bryan, and Oi’ve niver been so prosperous in all my loife, so now, begory, Oi’m going to vote for Bryan again." For the benefit of those who do not understand American politics I may say that Bryan was the Democratic candidate who ran against Taft, and had run each time for the eight years previously and been beaten each time. The other story relates to a Democratic big gun who was to speak in a small Texas town where the people were mostly prohibitionists. He arrived on the speakers’ stand pretty intoxicated; not incapable of making his speech, but his unsteady walk and flushed face told the tale to the people, and the audience hissed and howled. He held up his hand for silence, and when it was restored he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, when a statesman of my prominence consents to appear in such a small one-horse town as this is, he must be either drunk or crazy. I prefer to be considered an inebriate.”

When I arrived in Guelph, which I had not seen for nearly fourteen years, I found it wonderfully changed for the better, and as for the old college I should hardly have known it. Since I was there they had built, with money bestowed by Sir William C. Macdonald (the tobacco millionaire of Canada), a woman’s institute called the Macdonald Institute. Here young women 294are taught domestic science, which includes—elementary chemistry, and chemistry of foods, cooking, sanitation, household administration, laundry work, sewing, child-study, biology, bacteriology, home nursing, and emergency nursing. Then there are also many short courses, one teaching advanced sewing, which takes in dressmaking, millinery, embroidery, textiles, colour and design. After they have grasped all this they should be ready to marry and make good housewives.

This Macdonald Institute and the various short courses are simply crowded, girls coming from all over the country to take them. Some to learn to be housekeepers, some to prepare for marriage, and even girls of wealthy families to learn to take proper care of their homes. Attached to the Institute is the Macdonald Hall, also given by the same gentleman, where 110 students board and lodge at a charge of from $3 to $3.50 per week. Those that cannot be accommodated in the hall are found lodgings round town in well-known, respectable boarding-houses. For farmers’ daughters, and more especially for young women whose families have come from abroad to settle in the country, this Institute is invaluable, as is the Agricultural College for young men.

I heard in Guelph of a case of an English widow, her two daughters, and one son who had come to take 295up land and settle in the country. The mother and the two daughters went to the Institute while the son took a course in the College. When they had all graduated they moved west, bought a farm, and are doing well. In the college, too, there have been many changes. The course now is four years for the degree of B.S.A. (Bachelor of the Science of Agriculture), instead of three as formerly, and the range of studies has been much extended. It now includes animal husbandry, agriculture, arithmetic, book-keeping, botany, chemistry, dairying, farm mechanics, field husbandry, geology, zoology, bacteriology, horticulture, poultry, veterinary, entomology, forestry, French, or German. And under the head of physics: agricultural engineering, electricity, surveying, and drainage, calorimetry, cold storage, and meteorology.

This seems to cover the ground pretty well for a farmer, but farming is now becoming a science as much as other professions. The cost to a non-resident student (i.e. one whose parents do not reside and pay taxes in Ontario) is for tuition $40 per year, laboratory fees $1.50 per year for the first two years, and $5 per year for the last two years, and between $4 and $5 per year for chemicals and other materials. The board is $3 per week, but the net cost for board and tuition during the first two years need not pass $125 per year for a 296non-resident student who works regularly and faithfully in the outside departments.

One of the new rules practically d............